Silvio Berlusconi: Facing justice at last

Silvio Berlusconi's reaction yesterday to being stripped of immunity from prosecution by Italy's constitutional court was to go after the judges. Three successive Italian presidents, he claimed, had packed Italy's highest court with dangerous lefties. The last three presidents are Oscar Scalfaro, a staunch Catholic and anti-communist, Carlo Ciampi, a banker and technocrat, and Giorgio Napolitano, a former communist and widely respected constitutionalist. So what conspiracy have these three dangerous men hatched against Italy's upstanding prime minister ? There is none. The person who is dangerous – in the sense that he is actively undermining Italy's institutions – is Mr Berlusconi.

It is not as if these institutions, or indeed the Italian state itself, are that strong to start with. But in his increasingly manic self-identification with the Italian people – "The trials that they are going to throw against me are a farce. Long live Italy! Long live Berlusconi!" – the media mogul cares little about the tremors he sends through a weakened edifice. The effect of this is not to bolster the opposition, which is in need of a new and tougher leader. It is to further polarise society. That is why, now that it has been established that Mr Berlusconi is not above the law, it is important for the wheels of justice to start turning. The answer to a man who has done so much to stop them is simple: due process.

Two trials and two separate investigations are affected by the court's ruling. David Mills, the estranged husband of the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, is to appeal today against a four-and-a-half-year jail sentence for accepting $600,000 in returning for skewing his testimony in two cases in which Mr Berlusconi was a defendant. The president was scratched from the trial against Mr Mills because of the immunity law, but the court ruled in May that Mr Berlusconi had given the bribe. If the case is restarted, it is likely to be timed out by a statute of limitations. Similarly, a trial in Milan in which Mr Berlusconi is charged with tax evasion can now resume. Of the two investigations, one in which it is alleged that Mr Berlusconi "bought" two MPs is also likely to be dropped through insufficient evidence. But a second investigation in which he is accused of embezzlement and tax evasion in Italy and the US may lead to charges.

It is important that both the trials and the investigations resume, even if they come to nothing. Citizen Berlusconi will rattle the cage as loudly as he can, to divert attention from the charges he faces. But the cases must continue. Any other course of action will push Italy further away from its democratic present and back towards its fascist past.